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<p>Employees say:</p><p>"This is an organization that cares deeply about each other and is devoted to well-rounded flourishing. I've developed meaningful relationships with the leadership team and feel safe having tough personal and professional conversations. I recently approached my manager about increasing my compensation, and it was met with warmth and encouragement. I think my manager knew it was difficult for me to bring up the topic, and it was one of the best professional experiences of my life."</p>

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Ascend | Fortune

Ascend Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Nearly 80% of S&P 500 CEOs are promoted from within, most commonly from the COO post, according to a 2024 study by The Conference Board. Chipotle’s Scott Boatwright is part of this elite group: He ascended to the CEO position after seven years as COO, where he steered operations through transformative tech innovations like the “Autocado” (Chipotle’s high-tech solution to avocado cutting), built an innovative AI hiring platform, and fostered the people-first culture that Chipotle has become known for. In this fireside chat, Boatwright will unpack how the operational priorities that defined his COO tenure now serve as the foundation of his CEO strategy, with lots of lessons that every COO can dip into. 

SUCCESSION SPOTLIGHT: THE SECRET SAUCE THAT LANDED CHIPOTLE’S COO IN THE CEO SEAT

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Uh, a new feature that we are introducing at this year's COO summit is something called Succession Spotlight. It's all about COOs who become CEOs. And yeah, it's long been the case that there are CEOs who are very happy right where they are, but the, the data shows. That last year, almost half of all the new CEOs went to that job directly from being COO. Uh, it is the most common final step to becoming CEO. It is even more common than from CFO to CEO. So we have with us this week an all-star group of CEOs who used to be CEOOs, and they'll be telling us about their journeys. They'll also tell us about what they learned as a COO. It turned out to be really useful for them as CEOs, and that's what's next. A leader who has steered his organization through some truly transformative technology innovations and some other innovations. In a very tough business, please welcome the CEO of Chipotle, Scott Boatwright and Fortune's Kristen Staler. All right, so the last time that I saw Scott, he was a guest on our leadership next podcast in April, and honestly what I love talking about Scott to talking to you, Scott, is that I always get some interesting little tidbit. Uh, what I loved in April, he said you could expect to see breakfast tacos or burritos on the menu, and I think that went wild on our social media. So Scott, you have a lot of pressure now to say something just as good. Not anytime soon. Uh, hello everyone, happy to be here. This afternoon with you here in Scottsdale, it's not too hot. It will be much hotter next week, as I understand it. It will. It will. Now Scott, last time we spoke you said you want to open 7000 North American stores, and now since then Chipotle also announced that you're expanding into Mexico, which I think is really interesting. Can you talk to us about first what is the market for bringing Mexican food to Mexico and what are the operational challenges that you're facing to do that? The Mexicans are overwhelmingly excited to receive a Mexican concept. Um, I get that question often, and it's a fascinating one, and, and, um, some of our competitors have tried to enter the market, uh, with fits and starts and have failed to some measure. Uh, what gives me a lot of confidence in our ability to go into Mexico and be successful. Is that freshly prepared ingredients, wholesome nutritious ingredients is on trend in Mexico today, and it's how people want to eat, how they should be eating in my humble opinion, uh, so we have a lot of confidence between. Our group and as well as the Alsea group that the Chipotle Mexican girl concept will be wildly successful. So now I want to play a little game, Scott, with you, with you out here. I want to call this, uh, this tech AI trend game. So I'm going to listen. Some trends. Scott and everyone here, I want you to give a thumbs up if these are trends that you either use or want to use, and a thumbs down if you don't use them or don't want to use them, OK? So the first I'm going to say, uh, generative AI and hiring. Who wants to use it is using it. All right, lot of thumbs up. What about you? A thumbs up. I like the idea. I think it's a big one. Robotics and kitchens. Oh, we got a lot of thumbs up here. OK. All right. We, well, we, we refer to robotics as cobotics in our kitchens. We don't, we don't look to replace the human experience. We, we look to remove waste and expand or enhance the the team member experience. Interesting. I like that. OK, fully cashierless stores. Anyone do it? No. OK, we see a lot of thumbs down on that one. OK. All right. And my last one I have subscription restaurant models. Oh yeah, Scott, and I wanna say fandom around that idea no fan of that here. um, now, Scott, I know you have, uh, used AI and Tech a lot. You got the guac making tool, the avocado. You are using, uh, AI and you generate a hiring platform. Um, can you talk to us about this and also what is the future of using AI Chipotle? Is it some of these trends we talked about is something else? Yeah, I think the world is making a pretty quick pivot, and I'm sure everyone's talking about it, uh, probably at at this point around generative AI or agentic AI. I think AI has a place in in business today in all verticals across all industries. I think if more of it's not going to be really a strategic advantage for you. It's gonna be something that you can lean into and it'll be commoditized to the point where everyone will have access to it. Which is exciting. And so for you and your business thinking through how will I use AI to, as I said earlier, either remove waste or expand human capability in your business and thus reducing expenses in the business. So we have, we've, we've put AI in a couple of different places inside Chipotle Mexican Grill today, one of which is our on boarding hiring assistant Avocado, um, who brings in team members into our ecosystem. So we will double to about 200,000 team members this year. We employ 130,000 and turnover is probably a little below industry average. I feel really good about where we are, but we're growing at such an exponential rate. We will open a new Chipotle restaurant this year almost every 24 hours. And you think about the growth that's ahead of us in the Need for highly capable, purpose-driven, value oriented individuals is more critical today than it probably ever has been for the for our brand. And so Ava has reduced the time to hire by about 75%, which allows us to get quicker access to better talent. And anyone that's in my restaurant space today knows that when a high quality caliber individual walks into a restaurant, they are looking for an opportunity. And they will go to work for whichever brand gives them that opportunity. And oftentimes because of a protracted hiring process, we lose those individuals. This only not only helps us keep our restaurant staffed but ensures we have the best talent that's available in the industry. Is there anything you wouldn't use AI to do? Um, I can't say that today with a lot of confidence, Chris. I'm sorry. I know that we are looking at different ways whether it's AI driven. Um, camera systems in our restaurants to understand throughput, speed of service, order accuracy, and digital ringing, I think is a couple of another use case we're leaning into. We're also using AI in our loyalty system and so I think we're using a decisioning tool that is AI driven to target at-risk or lapse consumers within our funnel to ensure that we bring them on journeys that keep them transacting. With our brand and so the journey will go out to an at-risk user that hasn't transacted in 2 weeks with an offer, and that offer will escalate over a certain time period to get the consumer to transact, and that all happens behind the scenes and the offer is tailored to that individual based on their personalization and their usage of the brand over time. OK, now I want to come to the audience for a question in just a second, but first I want to ask you. Uh, we talked about, you know, last time your relationship with, um, former AAA CEO, now Starbucks CEO Brian Nichol. In fact, the last time we talked you were just, I caught you after a gym session with him, is that right? You catch me yet again. We were in the gym this morning. Oh my gosh, one of us. To the gym this morning and I promise you it wasn't the CEO, former CEO of Chipotle. That's OK. If you had to come here. That's OK. So I'm curious, Scott, was your goal to always succeed Brian and become CEO or how were you thinking about it? You know, I've always had on my goals card. I'm an old school operator guy and you know, I had goals cards since I was probably in my mid-20s, but it's always been one of my lifelong goals to get to the CEO opportunity to lead a brand. And all my car was specific was a Fortune 500 public publicly traded company. And so I had a lot of opportunities that I passed over throughout the years because I just didn't feel like those were the right opportunities for me at that time based on what I wanted to accomplish, my family's needs, which is critically important to me, and where I wanted to take my career long term. And so when Brian decided to take the opportunity at Starbucks, I got the opportunity to step into the role here at Chipotle Mexican Grill, which is really a dream come true for me to really work on a brand that I have such passion and commitment to. How do you think you're different from him in terms of leadership, in terms of personality? What do you guys do differently? Yeah, if you, if, if I could bring you back, BCG did a piece of work about 6 or 8 months ago that talked about the modern company's chief executive officer and how it's different today than it has been historically. Three things that they called out in the, in the piece of work where a CEO today has to manage a great business, has to manage a great stock, and I'll talk about that in a minute. I'm often misunderstood when I make that statement. And lastly was drive organizational legacy, not individual legacy, but organizational legacy and Um, Brian and I made a great tag team because I was, I was effectively running the business and so I think I ran a pretty good business and I know that Brian really managed a great stock. And when I say manage the stock, we're not talking about managing numbers. It's really about selling the story to the investment community about where we're going, what we're working on, and how we'll lead the company and what the growth story really is, and that obviously supports the multiple over time. And then lastly drive organizational legacy. What you know what is going to be my mark on this business as I take it through its next phase of growth in the coming years. And so that said, one of the things that I had to learn stepping into the role, going from the person pulling the levers, turning the knobs every day to generate an outcome to someone that is now working to manage a great stock and drive legacy is just a completely different job. Absolutely. Any questions out here. So you went up front and if you could state your uh name and title and company too, that'd be great. Thank you. My name is Bokashima. I'm a CEO of CoreLogic, uh, a financial services company. Uh, my question was more around, um, you, you're leading a great transformation not only from a growth aspect stored every 24 hours, international expansion. Then you spoke about AI as well. Can you talk to us about your change management? Like how do you take your organization through that change management as well, especially your existing staff. Yeah, probably one of the hardest things that you'll do, and I'll give you a little context first. So in 2023, if I'm getting my years correctly, I pushed the organization to the point with regard to change management, new processes, new protocols. That year we launched a new LMS. We launched a new scheduling tool, AI-driven scheduling tool. We launched 3 LTOs. We put two new ideas into into concept testing. We launched digital Hasset to improve food safety, and I tell you all this to tell you I pushed the organization too hard too fast, and I began to see operational performance start to slow down or start to wobble a bit on how we deliver the experience from restaurant to restaurant, and I knew I'd asked too much of the organization. And hadn't thoughtfully considered the change management necessary to get those ideas into into operational execution and do them with excellence. And so in 2024 rolled around, I don't know if many of you remember, I said we're going to do two things, we're going to do two things well. We're gonna have exceptional people and exceptional food, full stop. We didn't do anything else. I said no new ideas, no new processes, no new changes. We will do nothing. If we do nothing this year, we will land this year with exceptional people in our restaurants, exceptional people hired, staffed at model, and being developed to take on the roles necessary to support our growth and an exceptional culinary full stop. Customers come to Chipotle for the food. It's not because of the buildings or the bright smi smiling faces on the people in the restaurant. It's about the food. And 2024 was an exceptional year for our great brand. And so I think removing complexity, keeping it simple is critical, especially at scale, and I've always, you know, something that's, you know, a hallmark of my career has been around this idea that simplicity scales, complexity doesn't. Just keep it simple. Good advice. Any others see one here. Hi there, uh, Geron Smith, the CEO of Marshfield Associates. We're a value investor based in DC. Um, question for you about competition. Um, how much time do you spend looking at what others are doing in fast casual? Does that influence you at all or do you stay focused on Chipotle Mexican Grill? And that was my next question. That's a great one. Thank you. It's a, it's a tough one. I'll tell you it's just kind of funny. I think it's funny. You be the judge. When I was the chief operating officer, I spent a lot of time looking at SportsCenter. As a chief executive officer, I spent almost all of my time looking at CNBC trying to understand what's going on in the macros, what's happening with the consumer, what's happening with the global economic uncertainty. I spent a lot of time looking at competition across verticals and thinking through how other businesses. Or approaching consumer, the consumer today to drive transactions, um, and I probably spend, if I had to tie a number to it, 15-20% of my on on duty time really just looking at that level of analysis and trying to understand where we are. And Scott, I think we have time just for one more question. So I'm gonna ask you, looking back on your time as as CEO, is there something that no amount of preparation asCO could have prepared you for for CA CEO that you wish that you knew now? Yeah, I'll tell you it, I don't think there's really anything that there's no, there certainly aren't any leadership programs that you will learn that you haven't learned already if you have accomplished, uh, or, or gotten to the level of COO in your business. What you will not have exposure to in that role is board management and understanding board management relationship and how to navigate that successfully to get done what you need to get done in the business and leverage your board as advisors as they should be to the business. As a first time CEO, your board is going to be more hands on. Um, then they should be and trying to figure out how to navigate that relationship, build confidence, build trust, so that you can get them on the sideline, use them for advice and counsel, and their nose in and hands out. Probably #1. Number 2 is going to be this idea of understanding the investor community at large, how you navigate the complexity of the investor community, and how you support sharing the narrative and becoming chief storyteller for your brand, because that's effectively what you're going to be doing. Great advice. Well, thank you so much, Scott. I appreciate it.

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